ABSTRACT
LEGEND, THAT BEST of authorities, tells us that Tennyson hated to be seen. Once, he ran from a herd of sheep that his poor eyesight construed as a mob of day-trippers come over to the Isle of Wight to gaze at him. Exhibitionists, on the other hand, love to be seen; without a gaze they wither and die. They are people like P.T. Barnum, Sally Rand, Oscar Wilde—not like Tennyson. It's ridiculous to think of Tennyson as an exhibitionist, but that doesn't bother us. It's ridiculous to think about exhibitionism at all. Exhibitionism is funny, maybe sad, too, and certainly threatening. One look at any MLA convention or faculty meeting or classroom (yours, not ours) will tell you that we aren't so far beyond the "look-at-me-ma" stage. Exhibitionism is ridiculous, available to ridicule, precisely because it lies so deep in most of us. We laugh to avoid confronting the fact that ma isn't looking, isn't even interested, has gone away, was never there. Exhibitionism asserts that there is an origin. Thus, in its own way, exhibitionism is a merry, hopeful act, defying the facts, denying all evidence of absence. Floating free on the center-ring trapeze, we hang gracefully by one leg, and we are not ignored. The exhibitionist, more acrobatic than regressive, doesn't go off on a sad hunt for origins but loudly asserts and thereby seeks to construct that origin. I exhibit, therefore I am.
